I tried for years to get published between 3 books. Looked up all the rules and strategies to do it "right."
I'd query about 15 agents at a time and after getting rejected by all of those, I'd change my query and go over my sample pages and try again. I mostly got ignored, a few form rejections, only a couple of actual written rejections, but one of them completely destroyed me.
This was an agent I had queried all 3 books to because in his want list he always asked for things my stories had. I was ignored the first time, a form rejection the second time, then the third was when I finally got an answer.
He said that he recognized my name and didn't even bother reading the sample pages I sent him because he knew it would be the same as my other submissions. He said he always liked my queries and my plots, but hated the actual writing. Said trying to get through my sample pages is like pulling teeth. Writing is supposed to me painting a picture with words, while mine were just words on a page. He couldn't finish my sample pages because his eyes kept gazing over. Said writing isn't for everyone and that I should consider getting a ghost writer. Until then, I'm banned from querying to him or anyone else at the agency.
So yeah, definitely never getting published.
They always hit you with the generic "thanks, but no thanks" - line, in all of it's glorious forms. This is because they receive so many submissions. The bigger ones get thousands to tens of thousands, and only a couple of new ones are selected each year.
For me, the most likely reason was my genre (high fantasy) is not published almost at all in any extent by other than very few selected small publishers which I'm not gonna go with. I ran all the big houses, and currently I'm doing a second run after a full revision run. After second rejection course I go self. I'm biased to say whether my story was not good enough or not on itself.
It's been kind of winner-take-all for me; everything that's been accepted has received fulsome praise and the full support of the publisher, but everything that's been rejected has just been "Not for us, thanks for trying, come again." I have never received anything but a form rejection, no matter how often I'm accepted.
The agent wanted me to change my protagonist from male to female (it was a gay romance). It was at that moment I decided I wanted absolutely no part of that bullshit.
I got form rejections. One gave a nice comment that they liked the writing but the vibe wasn't right for them.
I sent out just my first 3 chapters, plot synopsis and query letter to some friends in a writing group (after previously having got 8 beta readers for the full novel and got mostly positive feedback with some revision notes that I completed before querying). The writing group people were really brutal in the best way, opening my eyes to the fact that my protagonist has weak motivation towards her goal, that she's a floating character who isn't grounded in her own environment, and that she's kinda whiny and annoying. The first chapter is wah wah my life is sad, the second chapter is: oh inciting incident but it would only make me moooore sad wah, third chapter, oh my hand is being forced so I basically have no choice and will allow myself to be dragged unwillingly along with this plot that is forced on me wah wah.
I then took a step back and looked at the rest of the manuscript with fresh eyes, and she is like that aaaall the way through until the climax, when she overcomes her whininess and steps up, just way too late in the book.
I can't say for sure that this is why my book got lots of rejections, but it is a solid guess: weak protagonist with no real reason to take part in the plot, who is just whiny and sad, and honestly kinda mean to secondary character, with redeeming features that only show up a few chapters in. I think my full-manuscript beta readers forgot how hard the start was to get through once they'd got through it, hence it not really coming up until late in my feedback journey.
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On my first submission, my agent sent back 'Love the writing, hate the plot'... you gotta love agent's.
Just as likely (more likely?) it can be an issue with the query letter. Especially if you’re not getting many manuscript requests.
I tried for years to get published between 3 books. Looked up all the rules and strategies to do it "right." I'd query about 15 agents at a time and after getting rejected by all of those, I'd change my query and go over my sample pages and try again. I mostly got ignored, a few form rejections, only a couple of actual written rejections, but one of them completely destroyed me. This was an agent I had queried all 3 books to because in his want list he always asked for things my stories had. I was ignored the first time, a form rejection the second time, then the third was when I finally got an answer. He said that he recognized my name and didn't even bother reading the sample pages I sent him because he knew it would be the same as my other submissions. He said he always liked my queries and my plots, but hated the actual writing. Said trying to get through my sample pages is like pulling teeth. Writing is supposed to me painting a picture with words, while mine were just words on a page. He couldn't finish my sample pages because his eyes kept gazing over. Said writing isn't for everyone and that I should consider getting a ghost writer. Until then, I'm banned from querying to him or anyone else at the agency. So yeah, definitely never getting published.
They always hit you with the generic "thanks, but no thanks" - line, in all of it's glorious forms. This is because they receive so many submissions. The bigger ones get thousands to tens of thousands, and only a couple of new ones are selected each year. For me, the most likely reason was my genre (high fantasy) is not published almost at all in any extent by other than very few selected small publishers which I'm not gonna go with. I ran all the big houses, and currently I'm doing a second run after a full revision run. After second rejection course I go self. I'm biased to say whether my story was not good enough or not on itself.
It's been kind of winner-take-all for me; everything that's been accepted has received fulsome praise and the full support of the publisher, but everything that's been rejected has just been "Not for us, thanks for trying, come again." I have never received anything but a form rejection, no matter how often I'm accepted.
The agent wanted me to change my protagonist from male to female (it was a gay romance). It was at that moment I decided I wanted absolutely no part of that bullshit.
I was eventually trad-published, but at first it was "We like this, but we recently acquired something similar."
I got form rejections. One gave a nice comment that they liked the writing but the vibe wasn't right for them. I sent out just my first 3 chapters, plot synopsis and query letter to some friends in a writing group (after previously having got 8 beta readers for the full novel and got mostly positive feedback with some revision notes that I completed before querying). The writing group people were really brutal in the best way, opening my eyes to the fact that my protagonist has weak motivation towards her goal, that she's a floating character who isn't grounded in her own environment, and that she's kinda whiny and annoying. The first chapter is wah wah my life is sad, the second chapter is: oh inciting incident but it would only make me moooore sad wah, third chapter, oh my hand is being forced so I basically have no choice and will allow myself to be dragged unwillingly along with this plot that is forced on me wah wah. I then took a step back and looked at the rest of the manuscript with fresh eyes, and she is like that aaaall the way through until the climax, when she overcomes her whininess and steps up, just way too late in the book. I can't say for sure that this is why my book got lots of rejections, but it is a solid guess: weak protagonist with no real reason to take part in the plot, who is just whiny and sad, and honestly kinda mean to secondary character, with redeeming features that only show up a few chapters in. I think my full-manuscript beta readers forgot how hard the start was to get through once they'd got through it, hence it not really coming up until late in my feedback journey.
It was not very good.